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Overdue Book

Wednesday, for the first time in more than 25 years, they came to the Anchorage AK Public Library, where amnesty was granted to people with unreturned books. All day, a steady trickle of people arrived to unburden themselves; the sheepish, the guilty and the shamed, into the sun-dappled lobby of the Z.J. Loussac Public Library to make their confessions.

"Once upon a time, in the year of Our Lord 1996, I believe, my wife's sister checked these out," Kirk Dungan told me. He slid a copy of "Traditional Buildings of Britain," "At Home in Scotland," and a curious tome with medieval-looking illustrations titled "Love and Marriage," across the counter Wednesday morning.

You could almost smell the satisfaction. His wife's sister used his wife's card, he said.

The books were from a time when his wife's sister was thinking of moving to Scotland. She wound up in Long Island. And all these years, the books nagged his wife. What if she applied for a job and there was some kind of electronic search and the books popped up? What then? What did it say about a person to have unreturned books in their past? The debt, money-wise, might be small, but karma-wise, it wasn't pretty.

Levittown Author Returns Overdue Book to Library
Some may think it sacrilege to harbor stolen property, including books from a library for more than 46 years, but that is exactly the offense that has been gnawing at the good conscience of established financial and real estate author Steve Bergsman.

Disgruntled library patron ready for court
He insists he returned several books in April 2010 by their due date. The Cudahy Family Library says he didn't. At the moment, Herle is on the hook for a $114 fine, plus $152 in restitution to the library.

"I am not responsible for their errors. Nor will I ever, for any reason, compensate them for their incompetence," he said in one of several lengthy emails he sent to me. He's invoking the Constitution and a couple of its amendments, not to mention probable cause, due process, equal protection, you name it.

Mark Gillespie of The Plain Dealer writes that libraries across Cuyahoga County are turning to collection firms to recover materials as that is claimed to impact budgets more than outright theft of materials.
To put the location in context, Cuyahoga County is home to the Cuyahoga County Public Library and the Cleveland Public Library which rank among the largest public library systems in the US. The corporate offices of Overdrive are located in the service territory of Cuyahoga County Public Library. A report by the Ohio Department of Development is available as a PDF file [CAUTION: Direct link to PDF] that speaks more to the socio-economic background of the community.

You can order holds online, read books online, review and discuss them online and now, in Seattle, you can pay your overdue fees and printing & copying charges online as well. Seattlest reports:
Are you a teensy bit ashamed of the overdue library book fines that have incrementally accrued over the months and thus managed to worm their way into your guilty conscience? If you’re too embarrassed to go into your local branch of the Seattle Public Library wearing a scarlet “O” to pay your fines, you can now clear your account from the comfort of your own home with the SPL’s new online payment system. (In fact, you can only pay your overdue fines if they’ve piled up to be worth at least $1.)
Starting today, the SPL is accepting payment by credit card, debit card or at PayPal. There is no service charge for making a payment online — and while the transaction is processed using PayPal, a PayPal account isn’t required. An added bonus for library cardholders who frequently print from SPL computers is the capability to add money to their accounts to pay for such services. Overdue fines can also still be paid in person by cash, check or money order.

Like many technologists, I may have had some vague notion that librarians had something to contribute to discussions about information and metadata and standards and access, but my concept of what librarians did and what they knew probably had more to do with stereotypes and anecdote than on an understanding of reality. Which is a shame. Although in the last few years I think we’ve done a really good job of making clearer connections between libraries and technology, I don’t think anyone is surprised when librarians are omitted from discussions about and between prominent technologists, such as the one facilitated by the Setup. (Note: by “librarians” I mean anyone who works in, with, or for libraries. Hat tip to Eli Neiburger for saying what I’d been thinking, only less clearly, for some time before he said those words out loud.)